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Ammunition reloading takes time but it can yield ammunition you cannot easily buy and may save you money if you consider your time to be of low value. Posts here at least mention some aspect of reloading.

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Barb and I mostly stayed home this weekend because of the heat and extraordinarily smoky air from the forest fires. Otherwise we probably would have gone on a hike. So… I reloaded ammo and puttered around my “library” (includes computers, guns, ammo, reloading bench, reloading components, and gun cleaning bench). I reloaded 600 rounds of 40 S&W yesterday and 600 rounds today using up almost all of the Fiocchi primers.

Combined with the stuff I had reloaded in the previous few days this month I topped the lifetime total rounds reloaded mark of 100,000 rounds. My logs show I have reloaded 100,027 rounds. 73,514 of those are .40 S&W.

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In July I loaded 65 rounds of 30.06 for daughter Kim and 2048 rounds of .40 S&W. Nearly all of the .40 S&W was Montana Gold JHP for practice at the local indoor range. There were also a few other bullet types when I was testing the Fiocchi primers.

August is going to be a very busy month with things other than reloading keeping me occupied. I also plan to make a bunch more 30.06 rounds, which are much slower than pistol ammo, or I would make the prediction that I would break 100,000 lifetime total rounds loaded sometime in August. Instead, I expect to reach that milestone in September.

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I do a lot of indoor shooting and the possibility of lead poisoning is something that concerns me. I get a blood test for lead every year and it stays within the “normal” range but when I wasn’t doing much shooting for a couple years it went to almost undetectable levels. Hence, I know I have a lead source in my environment and it’s probably either the indoor range and/or the reloading.

When I saw Powder Valley had no lead, small pistol, primers available I ordered some to test. I didn’t know they were even available to the reloading community. These primers would probably reduce the lead exposure at both the range and when handling the reused brass during reloading.

They are a bit more expensive than the Winchester primers (WSP) I normally use. Before shipping the Winchester WSP primers are $28/1000 (2.8 cents each). The Fiocchi no lead primers are $57/1500 (3.8 cents each). A penny per round difference… hmm. Okay, I would pay that if it significantly reduced the lead I’m getting into my system.

Due to a mixup by Powder Valley I ended up (after a couple of weeks) getting 1500 Fiocchi standard primers as well as 1500 of the no lead primers. They came in a brick of 10 trays of 150 primers per tray:

They are, ironically, a lead grey color:

I made up my indoor loads and ran them over my chronograph:

Bullet
weight

Powder
weight

Mean
velocity

PF

SDev

ES

Min

Max

Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, WSP
primers*

180.22

5.4

921.50

165.87

11.5

38.0

905

943

Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, Fiocchi No Lead
primers

180.22

5.4

916.67

165.00

16.6

56.0

897

953

Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, Fiocchi standard
primers

180.22

5.4

879.00

158.22

44.3

139.0

803

942

Hmmm.. The standard deviation and especially the extreme spread are worse with the no lead primers. And the Fiocchi standard primers are terrible! The velocity is lower and the standard deviation and extreme spread is through the roof. I loaded up some more rounds and tested them and got essentially the same results.

With the polymer coated bullets I use outdoors and CFE Pistol powder the results were even worse. The standard deviation went from about 10 fps with WSP to about 18 fps with the Fiocchi no lead primers (I haven’t tested the Fiocchi standard primers with these bullets).

I really don’t want to keep two types of primers around. I want to minimize the number of components types rather than expand them. And if I increase the standard deviation on the match ammo I would need to increase the mean velocity to insure I continue reliably making major PF. Increasing the velocity also means increasing the reloading cost above that of the increased primer cost, and increasing the recoil to solve a “problem” I don’t really have.

I think I’m going to continue using the WSP primers.

** Yes, I know these aren’t reliably making Major Power Factor, I’m increasing the powder charge some based upon this data. This load is just for practice anyway. I have never used them at a match. For USPSA matches I have been using Black Bullets, WSP primers, and ETR7 which has been repeatedly tested to give me a PF of a little over 170 with a SDev of about 9 fps.

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In June I reloaded 1947 rounds of 180 grain Black Bullets and 1753 rounds of 180 grain JHP Montana Gold bullets in .40 S&W. This, 3700 rounds, is most I have reloaded in a single month with the exception of when I first started reloading and loaded 10,944 rounds of 9mm in the month of October 1996.

So far this year I have reloaded 10,599 rounds. By this time last year I had reloaded 9,094 and ended up the year with a total of 18,265. I only need to reload another 3,683 rounds to reach my goal for this year of 100,000 rounds. I might even reach this goal this month.

I’m getting down to the last of the powder I use for these bullets and will soon be switching over to 180 grain Montana Gold JHPs I use for practice. I probably only have 500 or so left. So, on Monday I ordered three cases (7500 bullets). Looking at my order history on the Montana Gold web site I noticed something interesting:

It was almost exactly a year ago that I ordered the same quantity. The pile of bullets in this picture (over 22,000 bullets) is now just one case and a few small boxes. I have enough loaded ammo with Blue Bullets and Black Bullets (match only) that I probably won’t need to purchase any more of those this year. But I can see the end of the Montana Gold ammo and bullets approaching since I use those up in practice fairly rapidly.

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March was a busy month for me. I had hard drives fail on two different computers. The laptop was particularly painful when the Windows Home Server recovery utility didn’t support that hardware. I ultimately recovered everything but it took over a week of my spare time. The other hard drive only took a few hours of my time and lead to a simpler backup method which was nice.

Boomershoot tasks picked up too. There is still some space left if you want to sign up here.

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I was busy doing a lot of things for Boomershoot this month (I have to tell the story of what Barb calls “the box” someday) and haven’t done any reloading since February 5th, still, I did load 975 rounds of .40 S&W. They were all Blue Bullets with minimum powder charges for shooting steel.

Boomershoot is going to take some time this month and especially next month. But I think I’ll be able to load a few rounds each month. I’m hoping to make it to a lifetime total of over 100,000 rounds by the end of the year.

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As I reported on the first of this month I enhanced my program which parses and reports on my reloading logs. Not too long after making those changes I made still more changes. In now outputs a section with the yearly and monthly totals for every caliber combined. Here is that section of the report including the 3300 rounds of .40 S&W (minor power factor Blue Bullets for steel matches) I reloaded this month:

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Powder Storage in Reloader Hoppers

Powder left in the reloader’s powder measure hoppers for extended periods, overnight or several days, should be avoided. Powder needs to be stored in original containers ONLY, when not in use. Numerous modern smokeless powders are double base in construction, containing both Nitrocellulose and Nitroglycerine.

Roger sent them an email questioned them on this (“Why not leave powder in powder measure hoppers for extended periods?”) and got the following reply:

There are a couple reasons.

Despite warning some people have multiple powders on their bench, they leave the powder in the hopper for long period of times and they forget or think they know which powder is in the hopper, they pour it back into the wrong canister and there will be a problem. this may seem like common sense but we see this happen every week from a phone call or an email.

Some powders that are made today have a very high Nitroglycerin content to them, when left in powder measures for a period of time the Nitro will seem to eat the plastic. We have seen this with standard hand thrown powder measures and electronic ones that will get ruined.

Powder has a built in moisture content to it. the proper storage of powder is in the canister with the lid shut tight, this will help keep the moisture in the powder. Most likely there would not be a problem with moisture left in a hopper unless the lid is accidently not put back on.

I have plastic powder measures that are yellowed and I attributed it to an interaction with the powder. But I have never seen any that appear to have been eaten. Still, I probably should be more careful about leaving the powder in the measure for extended periods of time.

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I enhanced my program which parses my reloading log files. It now reports on a month by month and yearly basis instead of just by caliber.

Here is the result:

223

Rounds

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1998:

160

0

0

0

0

0

0

140

20

0

0

0

0

1999:

1777

0

0

181

578

25

0

0

0

0

140

653

200

2000:

43

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

43

0

0

0

2001:

47

0

0

0

47

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2016:

397

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

140

257

0

0

Total:

2424

30.06

Rounds

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1997:

180

0

0

40

20

79

41

0

0

0

0

0

0

1998:

150

0

0

0

80

0

0

0

0

0

40

0

30

1999:

90

20

70

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2003:

47

0

0

0

18

0

0

0

0

0

0

29

0

2016:

76

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

76

0

0

0

Total:

543

300WIN

Rounds

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1999:

250

0

0

0

0

0

151

60

0

0

39

0

0

2000:

460

50

120

142

0

57

0

0

0

0

20

60

11

2001:

382

25

0

0

185

15

20

0

73

0

0

0

64

2013:

600

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

100

500

Total:

1692

40S&W

Rounds

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1997:

31

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

31

1998:

11264

570

258

718

1577

1812

1710

402

0

0

1200

900

2117

1999:

2795

0

894

0

299

693

506

0

0

0

0

0

403

2000:

3187

795

0

0

0

0

1095

400

396

0

501

0

0

2001:

2295

0

300

497

300

0

0

1198

0

0

0

0

0

2002:

898

0

0

0

0

0

0

198

0

200

300

0

200

2003:

602

0

300

302

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2004:

1345

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

300

600

445

0

2005:

1059

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

659

400

0

0

2006:

1000

0

0

0

0

400

0

0

0

0

200

400

0

2007:

1136

0

0

0

0

0

0

118

518

300

200

0

0

2008:

2398

0

300

0

0

0

0

900

399

0

200

0

599

2009:

1702

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

102

300

900

400

2010:

1400

0

0

0

0

100

200

700

0

200

0

200

0

2011:

2300

300

0

400

100

0

500

500

200

0

0

0

300

2012:

399

0

200

0

199

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2014:

530

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

530

2015:

7012

1699

1630

1137

0

0

0

547

200

400

100

200

1099

2016:

17792

2197

700

1462

837

1899

1999

1000

1500

1000

1700

1500

1998

Total:

59145

9MM

Rounds

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1996:

11274

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

10944

141

189

1997:

7374

300

0

0

1190

640

65

0

100

1088

804

1060

2127

2015:

2993

0

1066

1927

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Total:

21641

Grand Total:

85445

I was surprised how many rounds I reloaded in the first month of reloading (9mm, October 1996). That was the most in any single month. I remembered I reloaded quite a few, but I thought it was just enough for the class I was taking. My memory was wrong. I got my STI Eagle, chambered in 40 S&W, in December of 1997. My 9mm reloading stopped until 2015 when I finally got around to using up the bullets I had left.

This year was the most I reloaded in any single year with 397 of .223, 76 of 30.06, and 17,792 of 40 S&W for a total of 18,265 rounds.

This last month I only reloaded 40 S&W. They were mostly 180 grain Montana Gold JHPs for practice at indoor ranges. 200 of the 1998 total were 180 grain Blue Bullets.

The 200 rounds with Blue Bullets were actually 100 bullets I reloaded, and pulled, twice. The first time I misremembered the powder charge and had a third more powder than I planned (4.0 versus 3.0 grains). I pulled the bullets, set the powder charge to the proper amount and reloaded them again. When I weighed the powder charge of the last round I discovered it was only about a third less than what it should be (1.9 versus 3.0 grains). I pulled them again and spent probably 30 minute trying to find out why the powder measure would sometimes put out the proper charge and the the very next charge would be way low. It turns out there was a bullet in the powder measure. Apparently when I pulled the bullets from the first set I accidently dumped a bullet into the powder measure along with the powder. I believe it was blocking the powder dispenser some of the time and giving me erratic charges.

I reloaded those twice pulled bullets this afternoon and everything checked out. I’ve got a good start on the new year.

In October I reloaded 257 rounds of .223, and 1700 rounds of .40 S&W for a total of 1957 rounds. I didn’t get around to the 30.06 ammo like I had planned as that project had a lower priority than generating more .40 S&W for USPSA matches. When I got caught up on USPSA match ammo I decided to continue cranking out .40 S&W for practice at indoor ranges. It doesn’t reduce the tonnage of powder on my shelf as quickly but it does rapidly reduce the tonnage of bullets in the corner. I turned nearly 44 pounds of .40 caliber bullets into completed ammunition this month.

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Widener’s has a web page and video Guide to Smokeless Powder (via email from Anne Taylor at Widener’s where I buy some of my reloading supplies). The basics are explained at a superficial but useful level:

Smokeless powder may be the most important component for any shooter who is reloading ammo and it’s probably the most complicated as well. With different characteristics and a ton of variables, gunpowder needs to be fully understood before you attempt to reload ammunition.

This guide will take you through the basics of reloading powder, show how all smokeless powder is not the same and demonstrate how the different characteristics of powder can make your reloads more effective depending upon your intended purpose.

I liked the video in particular (but check out the web page as well) because I have had people insist smokeless powder in open air will go up in a flash from a spark. My experience attempting to use it for recreational purposes in such a fashion was quite disappointing. This video is consistent with my experience. It’s tough to even ignite smokeless powder and, in open air, it burns slowly.

In September I reloaded 140 rounds of .223, 76 rounds of 30.06, and 1000 rounds of .40 S&W for a total of 1216 rounds. I caught up with my immediate ammo needs for .40 S&W. I decided to spend some time trying to develop loads I liked to use up my powder, primers, and bullets for rifles. Some of those primers and powders are over 15 years old.

I did the final chronograph testing at the Boomershoot site on Saturday. I’ll probably start cranking out 30.06 ammo this week and consume all the brass I have sometime this weekend. I’ll follow up with .223 the following weekend. I’ll probably have to switch back to .40 S&W for my practice needs before I consume all the .223 primers I have in stock.

I reloaded 1500 rounds of .40 S&W in August. All were Montana Gold JHPs for practice at indoor ranges. With my .40 S&W gun at the factory for repairs (I got it back yesterday!) and out of action for a month I should soon be fairly well stocked on .40 S&W. I’m probably going to reload some .223 this month. I have a lot of powder, cases, and bullets for them that I would like to get off my shelves. I may have to buy a few more small rifle primers.

If I reload just a few more rounds this month than last I will break 80,000 rounds for my lifetime total.

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I was out of town a lot this month so the reloading and match participation suffered. Over the July 4th weekend Barb and I were in Colorado visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park. The 22nd –> 24th we were in La Push for a family reunion. And the 30th and 31st I was in Idaho working on Boomershoot stuff.

Still, by the end of the year I expect to have a lifetime total of over 80,000 rounds.

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I’ve had Dillon Precision presses for ~20 years. No idea how many rounds I’ve loaded, but I remember buying primers by the case several times. Not quite this level, but enough to give the anti-gunnies conniptions. The Square Deal B is my go-to press for pistol cartridges. I’ve not used it in a while, though, between work, kids, writing, and everything else.

Anyway, when I went to assemble some 38 Special ammo today it wasn’t feeding primers reliably. Long story short, I call Dillon Precision’s tech support (they have a toll free number), get charged nothing, get my answer, and they are sending some replacement little plastic gizzies (technical term, that) which go on the end of the primer feed tube, mailed out tomorrow at no charge. He also told me how to clean the primer feed tube by pushing an alcohol-dipped Q-tip through it with the primer follower. That got quite a spectacular bit of corrosion / crud out of it, and it definitely feeds better, now. Not quite perfectly, but a great improvement.

Dillon presses are not the cheapest on the market, but I have never been disappointed by the presses or the technical support. As a former tech-support guy myself, I have high standards, and they meet them every time. If you plan on doing reloading, you can do much worse than Dillon.

I reloaded 1999 rounds of .40 S&W this month. I mangled another primer which is the reason it isn’t an even 2000 rounds. 800 of those were Blue Bullets for steel matches. The other 1199 rounds were Montana Gold JHPs for practice at indoor ranges.

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